When the nation’s economy foundered in 2008, blame was directed almost universally at Wall Street bankers. But Robert B. Reich, one of our most experienced and trusted voices on public policy, suggests another reason for the meltdown. Our real problem, he argues, lies in the increasing concentration of income at the top, robbing the vast middle class of the purchasing power it needs to keep the economy going. This thoughtful and detailed account of the American economy—and how we can fix it—is a practical, humane, and much-needed blueprint for rebuilding our society.

“Important and well executed. . . . Reich is fluent, fearless, even amusing.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Reich provides a thoughtful dialogue about the structural problems that led to the recent recession. . . . His ideas are worth exploring.” —The Washington Post

“[Reich] suggests a number of innovative ways to reverse the trend toward greater inequality and usher in another, more hopeful phase in American history.” —The Charlotte Observer

“One of the clearest explanations to date of . . . how the United States went from . . . ‘the Great Prosperity’ of 1947 to 1975 to the Great Recession.” —Bob Herbert, The New York Times

“Well argued and frighteningly plausible: without a return to the 'basic bargain' (that workers are also consumers), the 'aftershock' of the Great Recession includes a long-term high unemployment and a political backlash—a crisis, he notes with a sort of grim optimism, that just might be painful enough to encourage necessary structural reforms.” —Publishers Weekly

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, and he served as an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations (which has been translated into twenty-two languages), Supercapitalism, and the best sellers The Next American Frontier, The Future of Success, Locked in the Cabinet, and, most recently, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.He is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His bi-weekly commentaries on public radio’s Marketplace are heard by nearly five million people. In 2003, Reich was awarded the prestigious Václav Havel Foundation Prize for pioneering work in economic and social thought. In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the ten most successful cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century, and The Wall Street Journal named him one of the nation’s ten most influential business thought-leaders.